Local public transit

[mtbc]

I find railway travel to be fairly pleasant overall, especially as it means that I need not drive or park. This morning, my seat on the carriage affords me a view of sunrise over the North Sea, there are some lovely coastal routes for quite some distance north and south from here.

One thing that didn't amuse me was that one must pay to use the station toilets. Unfortunately, this seems common at bus stations as well as railway stations. I am all for their covering maintenance via what they charge operators or whatever, money for overheads must come from somewhere, but charging people in transit who may have many small children or continence issues or whatever just seems mean to me, especially where they demand exact change. I find this as disappointing as town councils who like to encourage visitors at times when they have locked up the public toilets. I am not going to be lingering in your retail area if I don't have easy access to toilets.

Another bother is that the wrong train came: the seat reservations are a mess so I may lose a chunk of work time in giving my seat up for somebody more deserving, we shall see. This train is slower than the one planned but I am not on a deadline. It tends to be ScotRail with the issues, I usually have more luck with LNER, but I am not a frequent traveler so the sample size is small.

Comments

[thewayne]

We did a river cruise from Prague to Berlin in '15 and were warned in advance that public toilets were pay in advance and to keep change. I take it that's not the norm in the UK?

At a shopping mall in Berlin, they gave a coupon for X amount off of a purchase, effectively making the visit free.

[mellowtigger]

Yeah, pay-per-toilet is pretty much the shining example of "capitalism". :( Like most essential services, I think the cost should just be spread out amongst everyone rather than charged at point of use.